Teacher education is in a state of change. There is a new focus on professional competence, including the competence for further development and learning, conceived of as workplace learning. Teacher shortages put pressure on the development of alternative routes to teaching. The arrival of prospective teachers with experience and qualifications in other areas than education requires adaptive programs, with a greater emphasis on professional learning in school. It is argued that promoting professional workplace learning asks for a conceptual clarification, based on new theory of learning and concepts of professionalism. A definition of professional learning is proposed. Some examples of new practice in teacher education are discussed.
In het TEPE-jaarboek Teacher Education Policy in Europe : a Voice of Higher Education Institutions , beschrijven Marco Snoek, Ursula Uzerli en Michael Schratz hoe op Europees niveau een proces van peer learning tussen lidstaten impulsen probeert te geven aan de nationale beleidsvorming rond lerarenkwaliteit en lerarenopleidingen. In hun artikel beschrijven ze het peer learning proces van het Cluster Teachers & Trainers van de Europese Commissie en reflecteren ze op uitkomsten en belemmeringen van dit peer learning proces dat deel uitmaakt van de Open Coördination Method die de Europese Commisie gebruikt om impulsen te geven op het terrein van onderwijsbeleid.
This paper presents the search for a categorizing framework that can be used to identify and discuss teacher quality. Both policy documents on national and European levels and academic literature show a remarkable variation in categories that are used to describe teacher education. As part of a larger study where the voice of teachers is used en strengthened on the topic of teacher education, there was the need to find a categorizing framework that can be used to analyze responses from teachers on the most important qualities that teachers need.The search for a categorizing framework combines a study of academic literature on categories for teacher quality and the use of international focus groups for the development of categories for teacher qualities. Both the outcomes from the literature survey and the results from the focus groups show the complexity of defining a coherent framework for teacher qualities. Two main approaches can be identified: one by using an analytical framework with mutual exclusive categories, based on Bloom’s categories, and one based on a task analysis of the work of teachers, focusing on specific roles or identities. In both approaches, both the literature and the focus groups emphasize the importance of personal qualities of teachers.Based on the outcomes a coherent framework for teacher qualities is presented, where both approaches are combined. This framework that might help in creating a shared language for discussing teacher quality among different stakeholders and different countries.
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Bullying at school is an emotionally charged topic that significantly tests the relationship between parents and teachers. It is a sensitive issue as it directly relates to the child's upbringing at home. Furthermore, parents and teachers have differing perspectives on the child, and the strategies they adopt to curb bullying are based on different perspectives and spheres of influence. In recent years, a variety of measures have been implemented in order to combat bullying at primary schools. Many different anti-bullying programmes have been developed for schools and a wide range of methods, training courses and tools are available to help teachers work together with parents in order to optimise their child's educational development. However, all of these anti-bullying methods lack concrete advice and tools to help teachers work together with parents whose children are personally involved in an incidence of bullying, despite experts across the board agreeing that cooperation between parents and teachers is of vital importance.The goal of this project is to develop an effective strategy to facilitate cooperation between parents and teachers that can be employed in the event of bullying as a supplement to existing anti-bullying programmes. This consortium's ambition is to boost the social safety of children in primary education by applying expertise in the field of bullying and parental involvement, and by combining past experiences.
